A story by Wes Rucker at GoVols247 ($) this morning suggests an awful possibility: the new SEC Basketball schedule, with the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M, could mean only one annual home-and-home rivalry series for each team in the conference. I have no concrete idea how the powers that be would structure an 18 game schedule, but Rucker's story includes quotes from both Cuonzo Martin and Dave Hart suggesting that if only one annual rivalry series was allowed, the Vols would draw Vanderbilt...meaning Tennessee and Kentucky would play each other only once per season more often than not.

You can make the math work several other ways - a 14 team league playing 18 conference games certainly allows for five annual home-and-home rivalry series for each team while playing the other eight opponents only once each year. I have no idea why we're not going in that direction, though I suppose some schools could find that setup unfair or unbalanced (I'm sure all of us would want Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Florida twice a year under a model like that, which might make it harder to win the league, but then again life has never been easy in the old SEC East in basketball).

Only one annual rivalry series means you would see the other twelve opponents through the other sixteen games - four home-and-homes each year on a rotating basis, I assume. Of course, the Vols will still play Kentucky and everyone else in the league at least once every season, but we'd only get to see UT/UK home-and-home one out of three years (I think - there's math involved, and I'm the wrong writer for that).

What I hate about this even more is that I guarantee you Kentucky will draw Florida in this format. Most of the other matchups for annual rivalries make sense (Alabama/Auburn, Mississippi/Mississippi State, some combination of Arkansas/LSU/Missouri/A&M, us and Vanderbilt), which would leave UK/Florida and Georgia/South Carolina. The Cats and Gators have had a lot of sizzle in the last decade, no doubt, but no team in the SEC has beaten Kentucky more than Tennessee. I realize UK is the biggest rival for a number of teams in this league, but no team in this league is a bigger rival to them than we are. And not that we wouldn't enjoy two chances to beat on Kevin Stallings every season, or that UT-Vandy isn't a rivalry...but man, it just doesn't seem right to have a season where Kentucky doesn't come to Knoxville or Tennessee doesn't go to Rupp.

Peyton Manning 96 Georgia

This is Peyton Manning at his most absurd. First play of the fourth quarter, Vols up 22-10 and can put the game away with six points. It's third down, so if the sneak fails, the Vols kick a field goal and Georgia is still only down two possessions. So I'd wager many objects were thrown across living rooms throughout the state of Georgia when this happened. How many other quarterbacks could not only instinctively look to make a play in a situation like this, but actually pull it off so well? Manning directs Marcus Nash and then fires right to him for the score that ended the threat. His grin and "good call" conversation with Fulmer and Randy Sanders on the sideline are just icing on the cake.

Casey Clausen 03 Alabama

How did we make this look so easy? In the second overtime of what would've been the second straight loss to Alabama and the third straight loss overall, times were very stressful. Given the way regulation went and the way 2002 had gone, there was a real chance Randy Sanders might've left Tuscaloosa unemployed. But ice cold, no mistakes was once again the theme in a hostile environment. Casey Clausen buys enough time from what little pressure there was for C.J. Fayton to complete his route, and #7 finds him easily for a first down to keep an amazing football game alive. The Vols went on to win in five overtimes, and Tennessee made sure Alabama would have to wait a few more years to regain the edge on The Third Saturday in October.

Tennessee doesn't win the National Championship without...

Deon Grant 98 Florida

In another fun side conversation, I think the two games featured today are the two best performances by a John Chavis defense at Tennessee. This one is certainly more famous, and features one of the most athletic individual plays ever made by a Tennessee defender. Tied 17-17 in the fourth quarter and Florida already four turnovers in the hole, the Gators still kept coming and had just converted 3rd and 7 to midfield. When Jesse Palmer let this ball fly, the guy sitting next to me in Z11 goes, "Interception!", and I distinctly remember thinking he was out of his mind. Because Derrick Edmonds is beat. He's beat with no one behind him, and this is field goal range at best and a touchdown at worst. Because there's no way Deon Grant can close that much distance in time and make any sort of play on the ball. But I should've known better. Because on this night, there was no way our defense was going to let us down. The video is from the Phillip Fulmer show, so it lacks John Ward's original call of "A STERLING interception," but he was, as usual, exactly right.

Peerless Price 98 Mississippi State

What happens when you start buying into destiny and all that is you never really think you're going to lose a game like this, and then fourteen years later you've forgotten how close we came and how very important this play was. Mississippi State had 87 yards of offense, a defensive touchdown, a punt ran back for a score, and a 14-10 lead on the Vols with less than seven minutes to play. On the previous play, Tee Martin and Travis Stephens got lucky that an MSU defender didn't blow up the handoff and cause a fumble. And the Vols made them pay immediately: in a preview of coming attractions, it's Martin to Price for a critical touchdown. The degree of difficulty is actually higher here than the Fiesta Bowl: MSU's defense again pressing everybody up, Tee Martin paying the price in the pocket, and Peerless having to contend with better coverage and less room. And the result is just a thing of beauty - Tee Martin is one of the more underappreciated deep ball throwers at this university, and this pass is just absolutely perfect. So is Price's footwork to stay in bounds. On the next offensive snap, MSU fumbled, and on the next offensive snap, it was 24-14 and we were headed to Tempe.

What was true three and a half years ago rings even louder today: Phillip Fulmer's legacy as head coach at Tennessee and his legacy to college football are not defined by the way it started or the way it ended, though both were filled with drama. His legacy is not defined by the highest highs of 1998, or the lowest lows a decade later. Fulmer's life, like all of us, is about the whole story. And that story, through its ups and downs, is still our favorite one to tell.

What more can we say about Phillip Fulmer? In 2009, still coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't our football coach anymore, we published The 50 Best Games of the Fulmer Era. All our best memories of him live on there; we're revisiting many of them this month in our Best Plays Bracket, which, honestly, should be called Best Plays of the Fulmer Era Bracket, because that's where all of them are found.

The numbers are great, of course: five division titles, a number that is still only eclipsed by Steve Spurrier's eight. No other coach in the last twenty years - not Saban, not Meyer, not Richt, not Miles, not Stallings - has won more than four. For a man who is all too familiar with "only eclipsed by Steve Spurrier", our favorite stat is once again worth repeating: 1-4 against Florida from October '94 to November '99; 37-0 against the rest of the SEC. And though great Florida teams did get the best of great Tennessee teams more often than not, Fulmer still got his money's worth against the Gators in incredibly memorable and meaningful ways in 1992, 1998, 2001, 2003, and 2004. But there remains no bigger prize than Alabama, and Fulmer walked into a rivalry that had won crimson for a decade and left it colored orange, to the tune of 10-5-1 against the Tide on the field. He also recruited a kid named Manning and won the first ever BCS National Championship. And that's just on the field, because as former players and all of East Tennessee will tell you, Fulmer was more than just a football coach.

We've been through our own lowest of lows without him...but as Derek Dooley now builds his Vol For Life program, we are always reminded that the ongoing story of Tennessee Football will always be built on the shoulders of giants. And none stood taller or loved this place more than Phillip.

Congrats, Coach. Yours is still our favorite story.

(from the Vol Network)